The Service Culture Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Your Employees Obsessed with Customer Service

by Jeff Toister

A hero moment occurs any time an employee, a team, or an entire company rises to the occasion to provide customers with outstanding service. Hero moments aren’t limited to over-the-top actions. They include everyday service encounters as well. In his book, Be Your Customer’s Hero, customer experience strategist Adam Toporek defines it this way1: “It means being there when the customer needs you and making your personal interaction with the customer as memorably positive as possible.”

Culture creates hero moments on an individual level, where an employee strives to deliver the best customer service possible. That employee feels empowered to do what it takes to makes customers happy and takes pride in the company he or she works for. You see it in the way the employee greets customers, solves problems, and goes the extra mile when the situation demands it. Culture also creates hero moments on a team level, where a department works together to serve its customers at a consistently high level. Team members share a passion for service that’s absolutely contagious. You see it in their pervasive can-do attitudes and in the way they support each other in a collective effort to make their customers happy. These employees take pride in their team, yet always push each other to do even better. Culture can create hero moments on an organizational level, as well, where an entire company is dedicated to providing outstanding service. Strategy, goals, policy, and other corporate decisions are made with the customer in mind. You see the impact of this customer focus in the legions of loyal customers who go out of their way to do business with these select companies.

That intentionality is what’s missing in many organizations. According to Mattice, most companies have policies that tell employees what they should not do. Companies with positive cultures help employees understand what they should do.

But you can’t tell employees specifically what to do in every situation; there are too many variables. Instead, an intentionally-guided culture acts as a compass that consistently points employees in the right direction.

“I can teach anybody [the computer operating system] Linux,” said La Gesse. “I can’t teach them to actually care.”

We cannot promise that hardware won’t break, that software won’t fail, or that we will always be perfect. What we can promise is that if something goes wrong, we will rise to the occasion, take action, and help resolve the issue.

A 2014 study by Execs in the Know and Digital Roots showed that 88 percent of companies felt they were generally meeting the needs and expectations of their customers. Only 22 percent of customers felt the same way.

Employees were constantly reminded of the corporate culture. It was embedded in the recruiting process, new hire training, employee development programs, and employees’ discussions with their managers. Alignment with corporate culture was assessed during the performance evaluation process. Culture was baked into policies, procedures, and job descriptions. Culture was deliberately integrated into every aspect of the job. The company’s service obsession paid off. Its customers were consistently delighted, which led to greater loyalty and a lot of word of mouth advertising. At the same time, its employees were highly engaged in delivering the company’s unique brand of customer service.

Strayed described her encounters with REI employees in her book: “Every last one of them could talk about gear, and with interest and nuance, for a length of time that was so dumbfounding that I was ultimately bedazzled by it.”20 In 2014, Wild was released as a major motion picture starring Reese Witherspoon. The film stayed true to the story and highlighted REI’s role in Strayed’s journey without the company having to pay any product placement fees. It was terrific exposure for REI, introducing moviegoers to the outstanding customer service that millions of its customers already knew so well.

Policies—such as the 100 percent satisfaction guarantee—are crafted to make it easy for people to get outfitted with the right equipment.

IN 2016, JETBLUE AIRWAYS WAS honored as the top-rated airline for the 12th consecutive year in global market research company J.D. Power’s North American Airline rankings. The airline also led all airlines on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) for the fourth straight year. This puts JetBlue’s customer satisfaction ahead of even the iconic Southwest Airlines. Leading a competitive industry in customer service for 12 straight years is an astonishing feat. A company has to consistently do a lot right just to lead the pack for one year, let alone for multiple years in a row. JetBlue regularly does many things that delight its customers. For instance, the airline offers the most legroom in its economy class of any airline.22 Passengers can access free in-flight television and free internet on most aircraft. JetBlue is also known for its friendly, caring, and helpful employees, whose consistency in serving customers has helped cement its reputation as a customer service leader.

Engaged employees regularly look beyond their job description to see how they can make a difference for their customers.

The company makes a concerted effort to seek input from crewmembers on managing the business. Executive leaders visit JetBlue locations every quarter to discuss business updates with crewmembers in person, and the company conducts both annual and monthly engagement surveys to solicit crewmember feedback on the quality of their working experience.

JetBlue’s individual leaders play a pivotal role in keeping crewmembers engaged with the Inspire Humanity vision. Laurie Meacham, who leads JetBlue’s Social Media, Customer Commitment, and Corporate Recovery Specialist teams, provides a great example. Her teams assist passengers via social media and email, and help resolve passenger complaints that require coordination across multiple departments. She emphasizes the JetBlue culture in nearly everything she does as a leader. Her teams primarily work remotely out of home offices, but Meacham keeps everyone connected through daily briefings. She also brings her teams together once a quarter for a face-to-face meeting, so people can stay connected on a more personal level while strengthening their commitment to the culture.”It’s really important to have regular touch points,” said Meacham. “If you don’t encourage touch points, you risk cultural drift.”

Crewmembers also acknowledge each other for outstanding service through a peer-to-peer recognition program. “We like to give shout outs to the team,” Meacham explained. Sharing frequent feedback helps crewmembers take responsibility for maintaining the culture amongst their colleagues.

A highly-engaged workforce is a common theme among organizations with customer-focused cultures.

Numerous studies have linked employee engagement to a better-quality of customer service. For example, Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace Report revealed that companies with highly-engaged employees averaged customer satisfaction ratings that were 10 percent higher than companies with a disengaged workforce.

Engaging employees isn’t for the faint of heart. It requires a lot of work and commitment that many leaders aren’t prepared for.

Some customer service leaders are willing to overlook an employee who doesn’t fit with the culture, as long as they’re productive. Other leaders just don’t have the heart to let someone go, even if their presence is hurting the performance of other employees or causing good employees to leave the organization. But companies with highly-engaged employees actively work to remove employees who can’t or won’t fit with their culture.

Another misalignment occurs when different departments within an organization fail to embrace the same customer service vision. This inevitably causes inconsistent service and harms the company’s reputation.

Morale also suffers when poor hiring decisions are made. New employees disturb team unity when they don’t embrace the culture. Their inability or unwillingness to serve customers creates extra work for other employees, who usually resent having to go out of their way to clean up a co-worker’s mess. Stress levels rise, too: a 2016 study of contact center agents found that 36 percent of agents who faced a high risk of burnout felt they could not rely on their co-workers to deliver outstanding customer service.

Engagement is a process of cultivating employee attitudes so they believe in their company’s customer service vision and want to use it as a guide in their daily work. Training provides employees with the specific knowledge, skills, and abilities to turn that desire into action.

Comprehensive and ongoing customer service training is a common characteristic among companies with strong service cultures.

If the company’s IT department lacks a customer-focused culture, the IT employees might not prioritize helping a store manager work through the problem while trying to minimize the impact it has on customers. Some companies inadvertently train their employees to actually work against their desired culture.

It’s also imperative that leaders monitor their operations to ensure that empowerment is working. Here’s an example. A hotel advertised that its airport shuttle arrived every 20 minutes. Unfortunately, shuttles actually took closer to 30 minutes to arrive. This meant that shuttle drivers weren’t empowered to meet the 20-minute promise. Measuring how the shuttle’s performance stacked up against what guests expected was a key first step, so hotel managers talked to shuttle drivers to get their input. They rode the shuttle and timed each leg of the journey to understand where time was spent. Then, through a collaborative effort between managers and shuttle drivers, new procedures were implemented. The shuttle route was adjusted to be more efficient, and additional shuttles were added during peak times. All these steps finally empowered shuttle drivers to meet the 20-minute standard. You can do the same thing with your customer service operation. Look for opportunities to improve. Collaborate with frontline employees from various teams to identify problems and get everyone on the same page.

Jerry Stritzke, REI’s CEO, decided to close all REI stores on Black Friday in 2015, the busiest retail shopping day of the year. Instead, REI created a marketing campaign called #OptOutside to encourage REI employees and customers to spend time outdoors. This might have hurt short-term profits, but it was squarely aligned with REI’s mission of helping people enjoy the outdoors. It sent a clear message that Stritzke truly believed in the company’s customer focus.

Customer-focused leaders frequently forgo short-term profits to reinforce the company’s culture in the long term. These enlightened leaders realize that the continued business and positive word-of-mouth from loyal, happy customers more than makes up for any temporary set-backs.

One customer service executive lamented that she wanted to build a customer-focused culture, but her company’s CEO “didn’t go for that touchy-feely stuff.” The harsh reality is that a culture initiative can only go as high as the most senior person supporting it.

Discipline is required to prioritize culture when it seems like a million other tasks need your attention. Humility is another important trait, since we’re all human and sometimes make mistakes.